Bruins, Rask look to bounce back, eliminate Rangers

Mike Loftus

Saturday

May 25, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 25, 2013 at 7:08 PM

Tuukka Rask and the Bruins stumbled, literally and figuratively, en route to Thursday’s overtime loss to the Rangers. Rask and the B’s want to rebound on Saturday night, and close out the best-of-7 NHL playoff series in Game 5.

Yes, he fell down at a bad time in Game 4 and that’s one of the reasons there’s a Game 5 Saturday afternoon.

Tuukka Rask says he’s already up, though.

“I think you either decide to cry about it or have a sense of humor about it,” the Bruins goalie said Friday afternoon, the day after he stumbled to the ice and allowed a Carl Hagelin goal that ignited the New York Rangers’ rally into Saturday’s Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals (5:30 p.m., NBC Sports Network, WBZ-FM/98.5).

“You’ve got to move on. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what kind of goals you let in – they’re still goals.”

Rask’s goal on Saturday at TD Garden is to allow at least one fewer goal than the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist, who has gradually found his game after a 5-2 beating in Game 2. If Rask pulls it off, the Bruins get a bit of rest before starting the next round and he gets a bit of a break from talking about how difficult it has been to close out series.

Rask and the B’s needed three games and a historic Game 7 rally to eliminate Toronto and Thursday night’s failure to oust the Rangers in four straight brought up inevitable questions about Round 2 in 2010. Rask, then a rookie, and the Bruins became just the third team in NHL history to blow a 3-0 lead in a best-of-7 series, bowing to Philadelphia.

“I don’t even want to compare,” Rask said after Friday’s 30-minute practice. “It’s a totally different team. We beat Philly the next year 4-0 (albeit with Tim Thomas in goal), and we won the Stanley Cup. Lots of things have happened.

“As we’ve said all along, we don’t want to look in the past or too much ahead. We like to live in the moment.”

Actually, Rask and the B’s don’t mind looking back at Thursday’s 4-3, overtime loss all that much.

Rask, naturally, was disappointed to have allowed Hagelin’s goal, plus Derek Stepan’s equalizer early in the third period on which the Rangers center stripped Zdeno Chara of the puck behind Rask’s net, and scored on a wraparound before Rask got back to the post. Rask also made several big saves in the third period and OT to keep the Bruins positioned to win.

“It wasn’t a bad game,” he said. “Obviously, there were some awful goals there, but then you make some saves and it’s a tie game. If it was regular season, we’d be happy to get a point out of that, but the playoffs is a different scenario.”

Rask isn’t so sure his tumble on Hagelin’s goal, which halved the Bruins’ 2-0 lead, will go down in playoff lore.

First of all, the case is closed, as far as his team is concerned.

“What happened, happened,” said center David Krejci. “We can’t bring it back now.”

“What do you want me to say (to Rask)?” asked coach Claude Julien. “There’s not much you can say on those types of things. It’s things that happen.

“We know the impact it had. (Rask) lets one of those in and how many does he save for us? You kind of balance those things out. It becomes a non-issue.”

Second, Rask doesn’t expect the Bruins to lose the series.

“(Hagelin’s goal) didn’t decide the game,” he said “Obviously, it gave them momentum, but it wasn’t like an overtime winner.

“I’m sure if we move on, everybody forgets about it. But it’s not in the back of your head every day.”

While Hagelin’s goal was the result of an accident, Stepan’s stemmed from a lack of focus on the part of Chara and Rask – and they weren’t the only Bruins to commit similar errors.

“It wasn’t anything structure-wise or that we didn’t play our style of hockey,” Rask said. “It was just mental breakdowns, and especially in the playoffs, you can’t really have those if you want to win.”

Fewer mental lapses boost the Bruins’ odds advancing as early as Saturday.

“We’ve just got to focus on playing a 60-minute game,” said the goalie. “Playing our style of hockey for 60 minutes and not letting anything bother us.”

Mike Loftus may be reached at mloftus@ledger.com or follow on Twitter @MLoftus_Ledger.

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